


The Variance of Sexuality

by wizardofahz



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 07:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11801637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wizardofahz/pseuds/wizardofahz
Summary: But then, almost to Alex’s horror—and Kara’s too judging by her expression—Kara steels herself. “Okay. Is it—What’s wrong with…” Kara gestures uncomfortably, putting the implied part of the sentence into words clearly a no-go. She looks like she’d rather rotate her eyes around 180 degrees and use her heat vision to burn away all thoughts of Alex having sex from her brain.Alex agrees. “I am not talking about this with my little sister.”





	The Variance of Sexuality

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Legends of Superflarrow Diversity Appreciation Week’s Aromanticism/Asexuality Day.

Kara knows something is off before she lands at the crime scene. 

The seamless rhythm that Alex and Maggie have—the one that confused Kara at its start—is notable now in its absence. Alex barks orders to DEO crime scene techs, while Maggie stays with her NCPD counterparts. Whenever they pass one another in the limited space of the crime scene, they don’t give each other a wide berth, but they don’t do much in the way of acknowledging each other either.

Kara approaches Alex, who is standing at the back of one of the black DEO vans and fiddling with some type of scanner, and asks softly, “Everything okay?” 

Alex doesn’t look up as she answers, “Yup.”

The brisk answer does nothing to alleviate Kara’s worries. “Are  _ you  _ okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Alex puts away the scanner, apparently satisfied with its condition, and starts to walk away. 

“No, you’re not,” Kara says quickly as she follows. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I can’t do that.”

Alex stops walking abruptly, turning to face Kara who nearly rams into her. 

“Even if something is wrong,” Alex says softly, so the DEO agents a few feet away can’t hear her, “this isn’t the place for that conversation, Supergirl.”

Her words are said gently, more of a reminder than a rebuke that they are at a crime scene in professional roles and should act as such. Alex places a hand on Kara’s arm and walks away to address the waiting DEO agents.

Kara waits for the right moment to check in with Alex again, but Alex buries herself in work. Kara colludes with J’onn, who is also worried and orders Alex to go home and get some rest. 

“I’m not going to let it go,” Kara announces as she barges into Alex’s apartment to find her big sister pouring out two fingers of whiskey into a glass. She doesn’t stop Alex. This is her first glass. Kara knows this because she kept her eyes and ears tuned in to Alex and timed her entrance to match with Alex’s. Depending on how their conversation goes, Kara might step in if subsequent glasses are poured. “Something’s wrong. You’re hurting, and I don’t like it.” 

Ever since that afternoon in Kara’s apartment the day that Alex came out, Kara has taken her apology seriously. She tries not to let her own life and problems dominate the time she spends with Alex. In fact, she’s started to pay extra attention to Alex’s life because of how terrible Alex, stubborn and independent as she is, can be at asking for help.

“Kara,” Alex sighs before taking a drink.

Alex is sitting on one of the stools around the kitchen island, and Kara sits herself on an adjacent one, facing Alex, and doesn’t care that there isn’t even an inch between them. “Alex, please.”

Alex sighs again. “I’m pretty sure this isn’t something you’d want to talk about. Hell, you probably wouldn’t even want to  _ think  _ about it.”

The words sound like a dare, and Kara says, “Try me.”

“Kara.” Alex looks her in the eye. “It’s about sex.”

“Oh!” Kara exhales, her nose and mouth twitching. 

Alex would revel in the satisfaction of being right, but she still has a problem, and no one to talk to. 

But then, almost to Alex’s horror—and Kara’s too judging by her expression—Kara steels herself. “Okay. Is it—What’s wrong with…” Kara gestures uncomfortably, putting the implied part of the sentence into words clearly a no-go. She looks like she’d rather rotate her eyes around 180 degrees and use her heat vision to burn away all thoughts of Alex having sex from her brain.

Alex agrees. “I am  _ not  _ talking about this with my little sister.”

Cue Kara looking like a conflicted puppy.

She’s clearly tempted by the out that Alex has given her, but her desire to help Alex wins out in the end.

Getting the story out of Alex is like pulling teeth—only much harder—but apparently it goes like this:

Alex and Maggie were discussing actresses they found hot when Maggie said she’d “do” one of them. Alex had thought it was just an expression, but apparently Maggie was serious and didn’t believe Alex didn’t feel the same way. Alex had been confused and hurt, Maggie had gotten defensive, and then untempered emotions spiraled the situation out of control.

“I mean, some of them are really hot,” Alex acknowledges, “but sex is called ‘making love’ for a reason, right? You do it because you love them?”

“Oh,” Kara says softly. “I think you’re demisexual.”

Alex’s brow furrows at the term. “What?”

Kara explains, “Well, apparently most humans get sexually attracted to other people, as in they see someone and their downstairs department tells them they want to have sexy times with them or something—I don’t know, I don’t really get how it works—but there’s this other side called the asexuality spectrum—”

“I do have sex with Maggie,” Alex interjects.

Kara closes her eyes and does a little shudder before moving on. “You can be both a lesbian and a demisexual. Demisexual means you only feel sexual attraction towards people you have a strong emotional connection to; someone like Maggie. Maggie’s probably an allosexual lesbian. Like I said, we’re actually the odd ones out.”

Alex tilts her head. “We?”

“I’m asexual,” Kara admits and feels some of the awkwardness Alex must’ve felt when she came out to Kara as a lesbian.

Alex places a comforting hand on Kara’s thigh. “You said it’s a spectrum?”

“Yeah,” Kara says. “So there are demisexuals like you, and then there are asexuals like me, who don’t feel sexual attraction at all, ever. We can get crushes but not the sexy times equivalent. Some aces—that’s a nickname for asexuals—like sex, some are indifferent, and some are sex-averse. Like me.”

“No surprise there,” Alex mutters before shooting Kara a teasing grin. 

Kara smiles back. It feels good now that Alex knows, and the conversation is a lot easier than she’d imagined it’d be. 

“So how do you know about all this?” Alex asks.

“The internet,” Kara responds. “I’ve walked in on too many people doing… things… and I didn’t get it. I was trying to figure out why, if it was some strange human thing.”

“Your poor eyes,” Alex teases.

Kara shudders at the memories.

 

* * *

 

Maggie looks through the peephole of her apartment door to see Alex on the other side. She sighs, braces herself, then opens the door.

“Hey,” Alex greets her awkwardly.

“Hey,” Maggie greets back. She stays in the doorway, doesn’t back up or step aside to let Alex in. She’s still smarting from their last conversation, and she’d like to avoid a repeat performance if possible.

“I wanted to say sorry,” Alex says, playing with the ends of her sleeves, “and also to explain myself.”

Maggie lets the puppy eyes win her over and lets Alex into her apartment. She also knows that, if truth be told, she also has some apologizing and explaining to do, and they’re going to have to work through this eventually, better sooner than later.

They settle on the couch.

“So, umm,” Alex begins. “Biology is unpredictable, you know? There’s so much heterogeneity, but we keep trying to sort things into neat little categories. I remember talking to an EECS friend back in undergrad, and—and I was excited because we had gotten an R-squared of 0.6 in one of our studies. And that’s good! That was really good, but, you know, being an EECS person, she asked why it was so low, which I mean when you think about it, that’s forty percent of your variance unexplained. Forty percent!  Even when you throw in covariates like age and—”

“Alex,” Maggie cuts her off, gently putting her hands on Alex’s now gesticulating ones. She waits until their eyes meet to continue, “I think I need the translated version.”

In getting to know Alex, Maggie has realized that English isn’t Alex’s first language, not colloquial English anyway. With her parents also being Doctor and Doctor Danvers of the bioengineering variety, Alex’s first language is Nerd. 

“I think I was wrong. I mean, I was right, but I was right before I was wrong,” Alex says, and she knows she doesn’t quite make sense yet, but she can’t stop herself. As she babbles, she thinks to herself that if anyone ever needed proof that she raised Kara, taught her what it meant to be an Earthling, then here it is.

“Take a moment. Breathe,” Maggie says, and once Alex has done that, she continues, “Okay, let’s try this again.”

“I was right in thinking that I didn’t like being intimate with men because I’m lesbian, but just because I’m a lesbian, it doesn’t mean I’d like being intimate with any woman.”

Alex pauses, watching Maggie carefully to see if these sentences are any more comprehensible than her previous ones.

“Okay,” Maggie says slowly as she processes Alex’s words. “A lot of us have specific types that we’re attracted to if that’s what you mean.”

“No, I’m a demisexual lesbian,” Alex corrects her. “I like being intimate with you because I love you. I can’t imagine doing it with some other woman that I don’t know even if they’re hot or the same type as you, and I didn’t understand when you said that you would.”

“Demisexual?” Maggie echoes, letting the word rattle around in her brain to find its place.

“Yeah, Kara told me about it,” Alex says, and Maggie nearly snorts because of course Alex talked this over with Kara. “Apparently it’s part of the asexuality spectrum? I looked it up, and only 1-2% of the population identify as asexual. Anyway, that’s why I reacted the way I did before. I didn’t understand where you were coming from, and I didn’t understand where I was coming from, and I’m sorry.”

“Wow,” Maggie says, still trying to wrap her brain around the new information. “You managed to flip the script and pull  _ me  _ into unchartered waters.”

“I’m sorry,” Alex repeats softly.

Maggie can see that her words have sent Alex’s stomach on a rollercoaster, twisting, turning, and plummeting into the bowels of uncertainty and fear. 

“Hey, no, that’s not what I mean.” Maggie pulls Alex into a hug. When they separate, Maggie looks up at Alex with a soft smile. “This doesn’t change anything between us. I’m just surprised. I didn’t know that’s a thing. I’m sorry if you felt like I was invalidating your feelings.”

“It’s okay,” Alex says. 

“It’s not okay,” Maggie counters, “but now that I know, I’ll do my best to keep it in mind. And actually I have some explaining of my own to do.”

But opening up isn’t easy. It’s been especially hard since Maggie was fourteen years old.

“You can tell me anything,” Alex says during the prolonged pause, her turn to be gentle and reassuring.

Maggie nods and steels herself. “One of my exes, Emily, broke up with me because she thought I was cheating on her. I had been working on this case, and the hours were long. You know how it is. I barely saw Emily for more than ten minutes a day, if that. There was this embezzling scheme that an accountant caught onto, and he was killed for it. It turned out his daughter helped him with the books sometimes, so I was trying to connect with her, make her feel comfortable enough to testify. Emily saw me one day. I’d met the daughter at a cafe. Her hand was on the table, and my hand was on top of hers. Emily assumed I’d been cheating on her. It didn’t matter what I said, she was convinced. She said some… pretty hurtful things, and I guess all of that came back the other day. It felt like you didn’t trust me not to cheat on you.”

This time it’s Alex who initiates the hug. 

It’s awkward at first, Maggie leaning stiffly in her arms, but then Alex says, “I trust you,” and Maggie relaxes into it.

When they separate, the atmosphere is still raw and uncomfortable.

“So, uh,” Alex says to break the silence, “I know we’re going to have more misunderstandings, because who doesn’t, but promise me we’ll always talk it out like this?”

“I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> I know that the internet, and particularly tumblr, tends to be well aware of the various sexuality spectrums, but I’m not sure that the general population does, hence, Alex and Maggie not knowing about demisexuality and asexuality.


End file.
